[LP] Long Time, No See

[LP] Long Time, No See

Table of Contents

Long time, No see

Hey! It’s been ages! How have you been? What are you up to these days?What have we been up to? Well, we’ve been quite busy, as you’ll soon find out, and this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There’s a lot of stuff just itching to be finalized. What are those things? I guess you’ll just have to wait and see. Below, we’ll tell you two things about how we’ve managed to “hide” some extraneous content on the wiki, but kept it available for people to see if they want to. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves; first, here’s Pholon taking a long historical look on the state of things.

Galleries

by Pholon

I recently bought an Atlas of World History. I’ve always enjoyed the subject matter addressed by them, but when taking history classes in high school, the “Netherlands” fighting for freedom from the “Spanish” invaders, or the concept of the “British Empire” all seemed to represent something quite different from what lands belong to these countries today. I love how such an atlas puts the whole thing in perspective.

That’s what’s important about history; it isn’t just a recording of numbers and years, which country won which battle and who reigned for how long. To get a clear impression of what actually went on at the time, you need more than naked facts. Learning about the Vietnam War isn’t the same without seeing the photographs of a dismayed L Johnson or this horrific image.We want to try and take the same approach with our “historic” Liquipedia articles. Sure, we’ll be recording all the players, races, scores, and wins, but the representation of a given MLG isn’t done justice, isn’t complete, isn’t well-rounded, without images of MC’s Murloc suit, Huk’s Hallucinated Void Rays, or Leta’s backflip.

Therefore, we introduce the gallery section:

The Gallery for MLG Spring Championship

In the gallery, we try to record all secondary media, including interviews, photos, videos, and anything else we can get our hands on. If you miss out on a great photographer’s TL blog, or that hilarious interview everyone is getting their new meme from, LP is now your central hub for finding links to these sources.

All of this leads us to the second reason for this new project. We would like to cordially invite any content makers - be they interviewers, photographers, or otherwise - to come to Liquipedia and link their material there. We’d be absolutely happy to help promote your material and, should the link to your Flickr album be lost in the depths of the SC2 forum, it will still be around on the LP page of the tournament for all eternity, so that people in the future, looking through some SC2 history, can still find that extra content.

+maps

by salle

One of the key pillars of a wiki like Liquipedia is collaboration. We’re lucky enough to have that specific kind of collaboration that leads to an incremental evolution of ideas and practices.As an example of this, there was a lengthy discussion on our IRC channel about one prominent facet of the wiki - how we show details of group results. What group results had grown into was starting to get out of hand on some pages. Let me give you a short background of the problem.

We have mostly used a simple table that presented the different matchups within the group and the score between them, highlighting the winner with a green background. It mostly sits ignored below the group standing table, all collapsed to a single line with a [show]-link that screams for attention, but only rarely do some lost wanderers on the wiki actually click on it.This was the standard for quite some time, then came GSL groups, and someone wanted more information in the match list box, so it evolved into something that looks very much like the match summary. Then, the GSL groups were extended to best of threes and the lists tripled in length. This became problematic, as it could have to list up to eighteen games. Once you factor in the fact that we use two lines per game... you get the picture.

Top Left: Original look of the group list. Bottom Left: First iteration for GSL Group stages. Right: Second iteration for GSL Group stages

The discussion moved out of IRC (thanks to PhiLtheFisH) and many people gave input, new suggestions, feedback on those suggestions, and newer suggestions still. People got so involved that I’m not sure whether we actually arrived at a consensus on which version people liked most... but I made the template code, then mused on IRC that it would be cool if we could add a bit of javascript to make it even better. Reign, to his credit, said, "Let me take a stab at that". Over the next week we had a few back and forths, since changing the javascript on the site isn't something we do often (actually it’s the first time we’ve added code that’s been custom made for Liquipedia).

So now we have a table that looks almost identical to the original, except with one addition; when the [+maps] is clicked, it will expand to reveal all of the games within the match, as well as what maps they were played on.

Top Left: No change here. Bottom Left: There's a new link next to [hide]. Right: New goodness.

Now, all of the information about who won, on what map, and in what order is there for you to see if you want to see it and, even expanded, it doesn't take up as much vertical space. Moreover, it currently supports a group of six players and best of nine series. Additionally, I think it looks rather good, if I do say so myself.

The biggest thanks for this go to PhiLtheFisH, ChapatiyaqPTSM, AntiLegend, and Reign, and big thanks to everyone else who offered suggestions and criticisms.

Staff Changes

by Pholon

As Liquipedia keeps growing, so too must its staff. Today, we are happy to announce our two most recent additions:

PhiLtheFisH - Apart from boasting two gold coins, and sporting no fewer than two Liquichievments on his userpage, PhiL has been more than helpful in developing new ways of showing information on Liquipedia. Apart from being involved in the +maps project above, he has worked his hands at the Player Result Timelines that can be found on, for example, the achievement pages for Ret and MarineKing. We also suspect he’s got some more projects up his sleeve, so we’re looking forward to those in the future.

shz - Although the pronunciation of his name remains a mystery to us all, the beastly extent of his contributions speaks for itself. If we can’t stagger you with his Contributions page, rest assured that the sum of all the reviews he does is just as vast. When he manages to catch a break from updating all the Tournament pages, he also holds the unsteady hands of any newcomers to the wiki.

With such amazing track records, we are happy to welcome them to the higher ranks, and we expect them to continue to do really well. Feel free to include these two on your lists of “Who to ask about Liquipedia stuff,” and, “Who to scream at in complete panic when something goes horribly wrong.”

Secondly, we are saying goodbye to Aesop. He was active for the Liquipedia even before the first one saw the light of day. Then, promoted to Head of Liquipedia, he was our very own dear leader for about two-and-a-half years. Last March however, he fathered a healthy baby boy and, as you might imagine, has been quite occupied since. His decision to step down as Head of Liquipedia followed. We wish him and his family all the best and we look forward to Minisop’s first edit!

Replacing Aesop will be salle. You may have noticed his forum name taking on a sudden reddish hue of late and this is why. Salle has been a long time contributor, has done a lot of work on templates, coding, and policies, as well as chiming in behind the scenes. If we had a sorting hat, he’d be put in house Liquipedior. Congratulations on your new position salle, we’re all sure you’ll do well

Liquipedia In Numbers

by salle & pathy

In closing, we’d like to point out that we’ve actively started to try and use the Liquipedia stream. Look out for it in the future, as we’ll try to show more of what goes on behind the scenes LIVE.